The present invention relates to computer systems and, more particularly, to a user interface for a search engine.
The volume of documents in computer databases is rapidly expanding. In spite of this expansion, paper documents are still in wide use. As a result, it is generally useful to be able to convert the paper documents into a form that a computer may use to store or otherwise process the documents. A typical technique for this conversion process is to create a xe2x80x9cdocument image,xe2x80x9d which is typically a bitmap representation of the paper document. This bitmap representation is in digital form. In particular, a bitmap representation is a matrix of digital values wherein each value represents black-and-white, grey scale, or color pixels arranged to form an image of the document. A computer converts the digital values into pixels that are displayed for a user on a display unit, such as a computer monitor. The combined effect of the pixels is to create a document image which is read by the user from the computer monitor.
Although a document image is an appropriate form for representing most, if not all, of the information on a paper document, e.g., words and pictures, this form is not generally appropriate for a computer to perform textual operations. An example of a textual operation is searching for documents that match certain terms or keywords of a query input by a user. A representation for a document which is more conducive for computer-implemented textual operations is a text code. In a text code, each letter of the document is encoded as an entity in a standard encoding format, e.g. ASCII. Since each letter is separately encoded, a search engine, for example,.can efficiently examine the textual content of a document and determine whether the document matches a query.
The problem with a text code is that it does not represent non-alphabetic and non-numeric images, such as pictures, in the document. Generally, when a document is converted into a form for use with a computer, it is desirable that both text operations and image display can be performed on the document. Accordingly, some computer systems maintain both a document image and document text for each document stored in the system. The document text is used for textual operations, such as searching a database of document texts for search terms, but the corresponding document image of a matching document is displayed to the user, so that graphical information contained in the matching document is presented to the user as well as the textual information.
A disadvantage of conventional computer systems is apparent when a user wishes to submit a query for a search, using terms or keywords found in the matched document. In these computer systems, the user has to type in the terms or display the document text for selecting the new search terms, at a considerable-cost in time and effort. More importantly, these systems do not lend themselves to automated search systems having queries generated from the text of the matched document.
There exists a need for an input method that facilitates input to a search engine from retrieved document images.
This and other needs are met by the present invention, in which characters in a document image from an original paper document are recognized, e.g. through OCR, to produce a document text. Regions in the document image that correspond to words in the document text are determined. The document image is displayed, so that a user can select a portion of the document image. Text from the document text, e.g. a word or phrase, that corresponds to the portion of the document image is determined and submitted as input for a search engine.
In one embodiment, the portion of the document image is selected according to a first and a second coordinate within the document image. First and second offsets within the document text are determined from the first and second co-ordinates respectively.
By allowing the user to select text from a displayed the document image and automatically retrieving corresponding text in the document time, the user saves the time involved in keying in the search term by hand or by manually going to the document text.
Additional objects, advantages, and novel features of the present invention will be set forth in part in the detailed description which follows, and in part will be come apparent upon examination or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained by means of the instrumentalities and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims.